Republicans Shot Down A UN Treaty To Protect The Disabled

Due to Republican opposition, the Senate this week
failed to ratify a United Nations treaty that seeks to
protect the rights of disabled people around the world.

The treaty, known as the Convention on the Rights of Persons With
Disabilities (CRPD) and negotiated by George W. Bush in 2006,
would essentially
make the Americans With Disabilities Act an international
standard, requiring other signatories to implement laws
preventing discrimination against the blind, AIDS patients, and
wounded soldiers, among others.

Before the vote, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.),
whose arm was shattered in World War II, was literally rolled out
on the Senate floor in a wheelchair to voice his support for the
treaty.

1. It violates U.S. sovereignty
"I do oppose the [CRPD] because I think it does impinge on our
sovereignty,"
said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.). "Unelected bureaucratic
bodies would implement the treaty and pass so-called
recommendations that would be forced upon the United Nations and
the U.S."

2. It would kill Rick Santorum's disabled
child
The CRPD's "best interest of the child" standard "may sound like
it protects children, but what it does is put the government,
acting under U.N. authority, in the position to determine for all
children with disabilities what is best for them,"
says Santorum at World News Daily. "In the case of
our 4-year-old daughter, Bella, who has Trisomy 18, a condition
that the medical literature says is 'incompatible with life,'
would her 'best interest' be that she be allowed to die? Some
would undoubtedly say so."

3. It's an attack on home-schoolers
"I and many of my constituents who home-school or send their
children to religious schools have justifiable doubt that a
foreign body based in Geneva, Switzerland, should be deciding
what is best for a child at home in Utah,"
said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

4. It would turn the U.S. into a socialist
state
"The other thing that everybody in America will be living under
is socialism as an international entitlement,"
said Michael Farris, a home-schooling activist who also
spoke against the bill on the Senate floor. "We're signing up
now for our first economic, social, and cultural treaty which
means as a matter of international binding law that goes to the
supremacy clause in our Constitution, we're signing up to be an
official socialist nation, cradle-to-grave care for the
disabled."

5. It would force the U.S. to pay for
abortions
"The global community could force America to sanction
sterilization or abortion for the disabled — at taxpayer
expense,"
said Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council,
citing a treaty clause that requires signatories to provide
disabled people health care in the areas of reproductive health.

As critics of these naysayers point out, there is no evidence to
support any of these claims. The treaty would not impose any
burdens that are not already contained in the American With
Disabilities Act. If anything, the U.S. is imposing its
laws on the international community. As an exasperated Sen. John
Kerry (D-Mass.)
explained, the whole point of the treaty is to tell the
world: "Be more like us."

To be fair, a handful of Republican senators, including Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.), joined Democrats in supporting the treaty,
though the 61-38 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority
needed for ratification. And it's unlikely that Republicans
really bought what Santorum and hard-core conservative groups
were selling.

Many of these politicians probably voted it down to stave off a
future primary challenge from the right in the spirit of
self-preservation. Indeed,
Sen. Thad
Cochran (R-Miss.), who is up for re-election in 2014,
"changed his vote from an 'aye' to a 'nay' after it was obvious
the treaty would fall short of ratification,"
says Shiner.